Wd Backup For Mac

Posted : admin On 10/20/2019
Wd Backup For Mac Average ratng: 4,9/5 204 votes
  • Product Marketing Manager, Matthew Bennion, walks you through how to get your Apple computer backed up. Whether you're using a My Passport, My Book or even My Cloud, WD recommends using Apple.
  • Equipped with USB-C™ technology, the My Passport™ Ultra for Mac portable drive offers an easy way to expand your storage with a modern metal design that complements your PC. It’s Windows® 10-ready out of the box to seamlessly deliver plug-and-play storage, while password protection with hardware encryption helps enforce the security of your content.
  • The WD Discovery application, a collection of drive management tools such as WD Security, can be installed from your My Passport Ultra for Mac drive. WD Discovery is a tray application; a small icon appears in the Windows system tray in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The application can also be 'unpinned', which.
  • Here then is our selection of the best external hard drives for Mac in 2019 in order of ranking. WD My Passport For Mac. The Western Digital 2TB My Passport For Mac is the perfect 2TB portable external hard drive for Mac users. It’s ready formatted for use on Mac, Time Machine ready and small enough to fit in your coat pocket.

Summary: The WD My Passport for Mac is not showing up in Finder nor in Disk Utility? WD external hard drives won't work on Mac? Follow the tutorial in this article to fix the issue and recover data from not showing up/not working WD HDD without data loss.

West Digital external hard drives, such as WD My Passport for Mac, WD Elements Portable, or WD Easystore, are trusted by a large number of users to store the massive amounts of photos, videos, and music files, etc. What's more, they are widely known thanks to their auto backup, password protection, and high reliability compared with other external HDD.

However, everything has flaws. At times, the WD My Passport drive won't show up when you connect it to your Mac computer, the WD My Passport is greyed out in Disk Utility, or WD external hard drive light is on but not work. Even worth, it may become unreadable on Mac computer. In either way, your important data on this drive will become inaccessible.

If the WD My Passport drive is not showing up in Finder, Disk Utility or on the desktop after connecting to your Mac, how to find it and make it work? If your WD My Passport isn't showing files, how to access data? You'll get answers here.

Table of contents
1. Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?
2. Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue
3. How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?
4. What to do if My Passport drive is not recognized?
5. Bonus tips

Why isn't My Passport drive showing up on Mac?

Sometimes, an external hard drive not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder on Mac is just because the USB cable or the USB port on your Mac is bad. In addition, the following reasons may also lead to WD external hard drive not showing up or not working.

Simply drag and drop files to and from, or setup a backup routine with Apple’s Time Machine software to help protect the contents of your digital life.

  • Recent macOS update issue
  • System failure
  • Virus infection
  • Motherboard issue
  • WD My Passport drive damage or corruption

Troubleshoot WD My Passport drive not showing up on Mac issue

As mentioned above, malfunctioned USB port or Mac computer, the broken USB cable and some hardware problems can also make WD My Passport not showing up on Mac. You can do some basic checks to troubleshoot whether this issue is resulted from those factors.

1. Safely remove the WD My Passport external hard drive and reconnect it to the USB port. Try quickly plug and slowly plug, sometimes it just works for no reason.

2. Check whether the USB cable or USB port is bad by connecting other external hard drives to this USB port or cable and see if that makes a difference.

3. Reboot your Mac computer to see if your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Disk Utility/Finder or not.

4. Connect the WD My Passport external hard drive to another Mac computer or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport external hard drive undetectable.

How to fix My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac issue?

If the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac still does not work or not show up in Finder/Disk Utility after the basic checks, go ahead to try out the solutions as below to make it show up on Mac.

Solution 1: Check Finder Preferences

If your WD My Passport external hard drive is not showing up in Finder and desktop, it's possible that the configuration of the Finder Preferences is stopping your WD My Passport drive showing up. In other words, you didn't allow your external hard drives showing up in the Finder or on the desktop.

Now, follow the guide below to set Finder Preferences and make the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac show up in Finder or on the desktop.

Step 1: Go to Finder > Preferences > General tab.

Step 2: Tick the 'External disks' option to show the WD Passport hard drive for Mac on the desktop.

Step 3: Go to Sidebar tab, tick 'External disks' under 'Devices' to show your WD Passport hard drive for Mac in Finder.

Solution 2: Check My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

If the My Passport for Mac external hard drive is still not showing up in Finder or on the desktop, you can see whether it is showing up in Disk Utility or not.

When checking WD My Passport in Disk Utility, you could have two results:

Case 1: Your WD My Passport drive is detected and showing up in Disk Utility, but it is greyed out or not mounting.

Case 2: Your WD hard drive is not recognized, so it's not showing up in Disk Utility at all.

Here, we'll show you solutions to case 1.

Method 1: Mount WD My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility manually

Sometimes, external hard drives cannot be automatically mounted in Disk Utility, even though Mac has detected the external hard drive. So it's possible that you'll see the WD My Passport for Mac drive not mounting in Disk Utility. In this situation, you can manually mount the external hard drive.

Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 2: Click 'Show All Devices' in View option at the left corner of Disk Utility.

Step 3: Select your WD My Passport for Mac drive from the left sidebar and click the Mount button on the top of Disk Utility window.

Instead, you can also click on the mount icon beside the drive to mount it immediately.

Method 2: Repair My Passport for Mac drive with First Aid

If you can't mount the WD My Passport external hard drive for Mac manually, there should be some file system problems in this drive. But don't worry. There is a native repair tool called First Aid in your Mac computer's Disk Utility, which is able to analyze and repair basic hard drive problems especially with file systems and catalogs, extends, volume bit maps. You can follow the instructions to fix this problem.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive.

Step 3: Click First Aid on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Click Done when the reparation finishes.

Solution 3: Erase/Reformat My Passport for Mac

If First Aid was unable to fix the errors in the WD My Passport, which is quite common, the file system of this drive could be seriously corrupted and you have to fix the WD My Passport for Mac not showing up on Mac problem by reformatting.

The situation is, reformatting will assign a new file system but will erase your data on this drive as well. To avoid the loss of important data, please make sure you have a backup copy of data. Without a backup? It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can at first recover data from the WD My Passport portable drive for Mac with professional Mac data recovery software, like iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free external hard drive data recovery software for Mac that is able to recover deleted files on Mac, recover data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, unmountable, unreadable external hard drives, hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. It's compatible with macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Recover data from My Passport for Mac with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery

Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on Mac.

Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

Step 3: Select My Passport for Mac and click 'Next' button to scan all data on this drive.

Step 4: Preview the searching results, choose files you need, and click 'Recover' to get them back.

Reformat My Passport for Mac in Disk Utility

After recovering data from this drive, you can now courageously proceed to erase your WD My Passport external hard drive with no fuss.

Step 1: Go to Disk Utility.

Step 2: Select the WD My Passport for Mac external hard drive in the left sidebar.

Step 3: Click Erase on the top of the Disk Utility window.

Step 4: Complete the information for your drive (such as new format, partition scheme, and so on) and click Erase.

What to do if the WD My Passport drive is not recognized/detected?

If Disk Utility can't show up My Passport for Mac external hard drive at all, it means the WD My Passport drive is not recognized. Very probably, your My Passport for Mac may have some physical problems. It's better to send it to a local reparation center.

Bonus Maintenance Tips for WD My Passport external drives for Mac

Apparently, most external hard drive not showing up issues are caused by unsafe ejection and sudden power outrage. In order to maintain your WD My Passport portable drive in good condition, you should pay attention to:

  • 1. Make sure that your WD My Passport portable hard drive doesn't become physically damaged.
  • 2. Always safely and properly unmount the WD My Passport for Mac drive after using it.
  • 3. Don't just unplug the USB cable, on the contrary, unmount your drive by right-clicking (control-click) on the icon on the Desktop or in the Finder and choose Eject.

Wd My Passport Backup For Mac

If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac data to an external drive. You should backup your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.

I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for the High Sierra update. You may also be interested in taking a look at the issues I encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest macOS. Poweriso for mac.

Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to backup your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also alternatives worth considering.

Where is Time Machine on Mac?

As I said, Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.

In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.

What does Time Machine Backup?

Time Machine is definitely the easiest way to backup Mac. In addition, the app is created and recommended by Apple. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.

So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything! Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it: They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.

Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac is bootable.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive

Note: the screenshots below are taken based on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra. If your Mac has High Sierra or an older version, differences may exist, but the process should look similar to what’s displayed below.

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.

First, use the USB cable (or USC-C cable if you’re on a newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac. Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.

Western Digital Backup Software For Mac

Step 2: Select the disk for backup.

Wd Backup Mac Os

Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.

Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).

If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.

Wd Backup For Mac

Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.

Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.

It says I have to wait 5 hours

After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining

Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.

When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.

One More Thing

Format Wd Backup Drive For Mac

Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It is advisable to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”! One good option is to use cloud storage services. I now use IDrive (read our full review here), and I really like it because the app is so easy to use, and it also allows me to back up my Facebook albums and photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I have yet to give them a try.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party recovery program like Prosoft Data Rescue and Stellar Mac Data Recovery, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.

Wd Backup Setup

Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: Backup your Mac with Time Machine and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.